"Must certainly be regarded as a red-letter day in the annals of ceramic literature." - The Connoisseur
"Furnival is to be heartily congratulated upon the all-round excellence of his book. The work should find an honoured place in the library of all clayworkers interested in the progressive advancement of British ceramics." -The British Clayworker
The manufacture of paving-tiles is a natural development of Mosaic work, and indeed, some of the earliest pavements are literally earthenware Mosaics, as at Ely and Westminster. Ceramics expert William James Furnival (1825-1910) in his 900 page book "Leadless decorative tiles, faience, and mosaic" (1904) devoted a 30-page chapter to Mosaic Pavements and Mural Decoration; it is this chapter that has been republished for the reader interested in Mosaics.
Furnival gives many examples of Mosaics in Italy. He then traces its progress in England during Romano-British times; considerable space is given to the illustration of the remains in which this country is so rich: London, Colchester, Bognor, Silchester, Cirencester, Dorchester, Leicester, Bath, Bristol, and York have furnished important examples.
As Furnival notes, "Mosaic assumes so many phases, may be composed of so many different materials, applied as a decorative element in such various ways, is the victim of such incompatible personal predilections, a reviewer inevitably discovers the choice even of a classification far from easy. He may consider it by periods, by uses, by styles, by materials, or by the technique of fixing. Sir Digby Wyatt is said to have treated the subject under seven headings, viz., classical, Latin, Byzantine, Graeco-Italian, Italian monumental, Italian portable, and Florentine at pietra-dura. But the classification that commends itself for our purpose is the one relating to the predominating material: thus, glass mosaic, marble mosaic, ceramic mosaic. Occasionally fragments of pearl, ivory, and precious stone were introduced,, but these partake more of the nature of 'inlaying' and 'cloisonne.'''
Contents:
Definitions
Chaldean cones
Egyptian inlaid work
Grecian
Roman
Glass mosaics
Byzantine
Italian
Venetian
British
St. Paul's Cathedral
Marble mosaic
Grecian Roman
Italian
Safacen
Indian
Modern European
Ceramic mosaic
Roman
Blashfield
Prosser
Minton
Contemporary
